


Eternal Tails: Bad Seed

by Pantalion



Series: Eternal Tails [3]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games), Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Cybernetics, Dark, Dark Past, Evil Wins, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Hurt, Mental Breakdown, Mutilation, Mystery, Paranormal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Robots, Science Fiction, Tragedy, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25223725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pantalion/pseuds/Pantalion
Summary: It cost everything Miles "Tails" Prower had to escape his fate in Happy Days, but did he ever really escape in the first place? Waking up to a vast mechanical complex full of mechanical monsters - and worse - hunting him through its depths, will Miles manage to discover the secret of the Happy Days project? And how much more will he have to lose to stop them from taking him back?
Relationships: Cream the Rabbit & Miles "Tails" Prower
Series: Eternal Tails [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820140
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo! Just to let you know that this story is a direct sequel to Eternal Tails: Happy Days. You'll never _need_ to read earlier Eternal Tails stories to know what's going on, but you might enjoy both stories more if you read them in order.
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> ~ Pan

Seven percent.

Miles "Tails" Prower, child genius, mobian fox, and eternal sidekick hunched over a young rabbit in the cold metal shaft, twin tails pressing down rhythmically against her chest as he leaned in, using his hands to tilt her jaw back. Blood tinged clear fluid seeped onto the floor from the hole in the back of her head. The same hole he had in his own.

_Breathe._

Seven percent to survive with help on the way. Seven percent with optimal conditions. Seven percent if she was defibrillated _right now_. Seven percent just to survive, however damaged.

Hiding in a freezing ventilation shaft with no tools, no room, and no medical help coming?

_Breathe._

Not great odds. Dropping every minute.

Mobians couldn't hold their breath that long. About thirty seconds. He'd almost drowned in his tank before he escaped. She'd been in there at least twice as long before he got her.

_Breathe._

Miles pulled back, his lungs burning and the tank's acrid slime foul in his mouth as he probed the side of the shaft for a maintenance panel, for _anything_. His bare, ungloved fingers probed in the dark. Totally smooth.

Six point three percent.

His tails ached from the unfamiliar movement. Was he going to have to-

" _Mister Prower."_ Her voice, _Cream's_ voice whispered through the shaft, warm and caring, a voice he'd heard every day for longer than he could remember.

The voice that belonged to the rabbit in front of him.

A whirring sound came from the room beyond the vent, metal clattering on metal and rust squeaking as a pair of whirring mechanical horrors clattered into the room. Miles forced his ragged breathing still, staring between the grate at his pursuers.

The two bots separated, limping between rows of silent metal cylinders searching for him.

Once they might have been designed after crabs, legs and claws sprouting from an egg-shaped core. Now, they couldn't make _one_ crab with all their parts combined.

" _We know you're here, Mister Prower."_ Cream whispered gently from both the machines, completely at odds with their decayed appearance. " _We want to_ _ **help**_ _you."_

Five point eight percent. He leaned over again.

_Breathe._

" _We just want to bring you back where it's_ _ **warm**_ _, and_ _ **safe**_ _."_ Beams of light shone through the room as the bots swept from row to row, column to column.

_Breathe._

He was delaying the inevitable. CPR couldn't fix a pulseless heart beat, it could only prevent tissue damage. Only an electrical shock could reset the electrical signal, and only if her heart was merely dysrhythmic, rather than stopped.

" _We love you so much, after all."_ Cream whispered breathily. One of the crab-bots slammed its lone claw into a cylinder, sending a hollow boom through the room.

_Breathe._

Miles pulled back, black spots swimming in front of his tear-filled eyes, taking over compressions with his hands to let his tails rest.

It might be hopeless. But he wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop.

Because he wasn't sure he could live without her.

Because he was sure this was _his_ fault.

Broken beams of light penetrated the grate, illuminating Miles' hiding place.

 _"We found you!"_ Cream cried in a sing-song voice from two different voice boxes. The two crab-bots skittered towards him.

Miles blinked.

Two _powered_ robots.

He exploded out of the vent, flying fist first into the closest crab. Even as weak and slow as he was compared to normal, he struck with the force of a small fuzzy cannonball. An arc of electricity sparked past his head as the bot rocked backwards.

Four point four percent.

Miles spun sideways as the second crab sent out a salvo of metal flying at him. They bounced harmlessly off the first crab's dented metal shell, clattering across the floor.

The thing people always seemed to misunderstand about his IQ, which was almost as many standard deviations above average than there were IQ points _in_ those standard deviations, was that it didn't _make_ him a scientist. He launched to his feet, slamming both tails into the second crab's cannon, smashing it to reveal sparking wires beneath.

It didn't make him talk in big words, give him a perfect memory, it didn't even make him _right_ all the time.

The first crab righted itself, sending another shock towards him from behind. But Miles was already moving out of its way. The bolt crackled over his ear, right into the second crab's newly exposed circuitry. It exploded next to him, a skeletal bird clattered to the floor amidst a shower of scrap.

What it did do was make him _think_ faster. Faster than most computers. Fast enough that by the time someone finished asking him a question he'd already considered every possible ramification, every possible angle, simulated countless alternatives, and had long since drifted onto tangents while he waited for them to catch up.

Miles dropped under another shock bolt, closing the gap in a low crouch before using his tails as a spring to launch up into the crab in a surging uppercut. It smashed backwards once more, losing most of its remaining legs on impact.

" _Mister Prower,_ _ **why**_ _? We… just… want… to… help… you~"_

Miles' foot smashed into its chassis, and Cream's heartbroken voice buzzed into silence. Too late to preserve his own breaking heart.

Three point two percent.

"Don't explode yet." Miles muttered numbly as he tore the mech's damaged arm free, dragging it bodily with him towards the vent. His aching head was swimming even more now. Probably the cerebrospinal fluid leaking out of his neck.

 _Anyone_ could arrive at the right answer with enough thinking. _Anyone_ could learn anything with enough time and patience.

And in that overclocked head of his, Miles had had plenty of time to learn all _sorts_ of things.

Tearing sparking wires out of its body with his bare hands, Miles hauled Cream's bod- _Cream_ out of the vent with his tails.

"Thish should… shtop yourr heart." Miles shook his head, voice slurring. "If you're not already-"

"Clear."

Miles poked the wires into her chest. Her body arched. The scent of burning fur hit his nostrils, bringing old trauma back to the forefront of his memory even as his mind continued to fade.

Why was he so- Miles' eyes widened.

The thing the robot shot. Knockout gas canisters.

Running out of time.

Miles pressed his fingers against the rabbit's throat.

Nothing.

The door opened once more. Three massive, if poorly maintained, robots clanked into the room, stylised moustache faces almost completely obscured by rust and decay.

" _There you are, Mister Prower!"_ Cream murmured happily from the three of them.

Miles heaved forward, using his tails coiled around her to constrict the rabbit's chest to time as he dragged her and the robot back towards the vent. Bolts of energy crackled into the crab as he held it between himself and the approaching mecha.

Miles panted in exertion, aware that doing so was flooding his body with even more of the gas. Blood dripped from all across his body as the effort reopened the wounds where they'd inserted the tubes before.

Inside the vent, Miles dragged the crab bot into the opening as far as he could. Its lone glowing eye stared mutely at him as more metal canisters bounced off its body outside.

"Clear." Miles muttered.

His own warning barely reminded him to remove his own tails before he shocked her again. He wasn't going to make-

Cream let in a slow, shuddering breath, then vomited.

That was it. That was all he could do. Miles grabbed her, dragging her behind him with all the strength his fading consciousness could muster as he crawled through the mess and into the darkness beyond.

Moments later, a metal claw burst through the crab, scraping around inside the vent.

" _Mister Prower? Little rabbit? Where did you go?"_

The heavy mech peeled the crab-bot's body off its arm, letting it tumble to the floor where it exploded into scrap. The three heavy mechs walked in unison towards the door.

" ** _Darling_** _little children. We do so_ _ **enjoy**_ _hide and seek."_


	2. Chapter 2

Consciousness came back slow and hard for Miles.

For a long moment he lay still, struggling to process what was happening.

When had he woken up and it not been sunny? When had he started his day anywhere except laid comfortably under his plane? The chill hardness of metal and gloom was a far cry from the warm, comfortable existence he'd only just broken free of. The simulation that had been his reality for what felt like a lifetime.

The warm comfortable existence with Cream.

His eyes snapped open.

He still lay where he'd fallen from the ventilation duct the day(?) before, his body no longer able to fight off the effects of the bots' gas. Dried blood and vomit caked his fur, smeared over a dozen aches where he'd torn wires and tubes from his body, or where he'd smashed through the glass of his prison - he could no longer tell which was which. He no longer cared.

Cream lay beside him. Fur as stained as his own, a little longer than before, a little leaner and taller, her ears a little longer. Still unmistakably the face of his fellow prisoner in paradise.

Miles hesitated, heart pounding ice cold in his chest, but eventually he reached out a trembling hand, holding it in front of her lips…

The faintest of breaths tickled the fur of his hand. Miles released his own breath all in a rush. Still alive at least, however bad the damage might be.

However badly he might have damaged her.

Guilt, no stranger to Miles at the best of times, clawed at his gut.

"... Hey." Miles shook her shoulder gently. "Cream?"

Cream whimpered, almost on the edge of hearing, but didn't otherwise stir.

Miles frowned. She needed somewhere to _rest_ , preferably somewhere warm. At _least_ a blanket or something. Her fur was nowhere near as thick as his and he was already cold to his bones.

If he hadn't broken them out, if he'd waited for a hero, like Sonic, to save them, the pods wouldn't have failed. She wouldn't have been ripped out of heaven to drown alone in the dark...

Miles shook his head. He caused this. There was no time for him to wait for someone else to fix it.

"C'mon, Cream. We'll try and figure something out here."

Miles weaved upright, glancing around to try and figure out where "here" was. Overhead was the ventilation shaft, metal sheared as though something heavy had torn through at some point. Empty shelves lined the room. A storage room? Some kind of mechanical facility was certain. Familiar too, classic Doctor Robotnik chic, exposed pipes everywhere, shoddy welding job. Glowing bits on the walls as well, they were what was providing the light. The doctor _loved_ unnecessary flashing lights almost as much as he loved unnecessarily exposed weak points on his doomsday weapons. Stable genius he was not.

Still, if this was one of his-

" _Thinking again, Mister Tails?"_ Cream laughed.

"Cream!" Miles whirled around, but the rabbit was still unconscious.

Their captor?

Miles crouched low, ears pricked for any signs of movement, but there was nothing beyond the faint hum of distant electronics.

Well that settled the question of whether he left her here to explore. Miles wrapped his tails around Cream, pulling her up onto his back where she flopped, arms and ears dangling over his shoulders.

"Hm…" Miles tapped his lips with a bare finger.

She weighed about as much as he did, which was several orders of magnitude lower than the weight he could comfortably carry - in another life carrying multiple people at a time was a thing he did quite frequently, generally through the air using his tails to fly. But holding her like this? If only he had some way to keep her in place without locking down the important assets on his asset.

Wait.

"Sorry about this, Cream. I'll find some wires or something soon."

Grabbing her ears he wrapped them around her wrists, letting most of her weight rest against the base of his tails before tying her ears into a loose bow around his neck to hold her in place.

Hm. Wasn't there a song about something like this?

Whatever.

It wasn't that secure, but with her injuries he'd need to move slowly anyway.

"Alright, way out, clothes - shoes would be _real_ nice - some rings if we can find any... anything else you want, Cream?"

His stomach let out a low gurgle. He literally had no idea when he last ate. Or drank.

"Gotcha. We'll try and grab some lunch while we're out."

Stretching the kinks out one last time, Miles headed for the door.

* * *

How _big_ was this place?

Miles padded on all fours, keeping low to squeeze through a gap where the ceiling had partially caved in.

Robotnik's "badnik" robots were everywhere. Juddering, broken things caked with rust and filth. They were easily detected by the squeak of their joints as they aimlessly milled back and forth, or, far worse, by _Cream_ 's cheerful humming as they moved with laser focus from door to door hunting for him.

He avoided them, keeping to the shadows as he drifted from corridor to corridor, scurrying past when they entered a room to move to places they'd already searched, all while exploring one empty storeroom after another, barely even scraps of scraps on their shelves. Nothing useful, even to him.

While he was strong - far, far stronger than his tiny size and terrible condition would attest - his problem was a question of _mass_. However strong he might be, his ability to turn that strength into actual striking force was limited. When he was able to put his full weight and speed behind a punch, he could exert more force than a high speed car crash onto a _much_ smaller surface area. Even better, he could spin using his tails like a mace, shredding through metal like it was paper...

And when he had an injured little rabbit girl on his back, he could do _neither_ of those things. Badnik robots were almost as dangerous to him right now as they were to most other people - heavily armed ambulatory tanks. Trying to punch one from a standing start like this would accomplish little more than the propulsion of one hundred and thirty pounds of fluff into a wall in the opposite direction while the badnik watched. Or, more likely, while it called another fifty over to finish the job.

Miles stopped before a crossroads, staring at a corroded sign on the wall. _G...R...L ST...A...E_ was all he could make out in the dull glow from the bulkheads.

"Mama." Cream breathed in his ear, arms tightening about his shoulders before loosening once more.

Miles breathed out slowly, heart hammering in his chest. He _really_ wished her voice wasn't attached to the badniks hunting them. Still, that was a good sign, right?

Well, a better sign than _this_ one. He squinted at the filthy thing, too short to reach up to try and clean it. "GENERAL STORAGE" maybe? Letters looked to be in about the right-

The wall lights turned out, plunging everything into darkness. Miles barely suppressed a surprised yelp.

" _Mister Proooowerr."_ Cream's melodic laugh echoed in the dark.

"Mama."

A soft blue glow built up around the corner, a swirling shadow extending along with it, coiling, writhing in the light.

Oh no.

" _It's time to come **home** , Mister Prower."_

Miles glanced around the darkness. No vents around, and the only room nearby was one he'd already skipped because the door had jammed while opening, the gap barely an inch off the ground.

"Mama."

Time to see if he could change that.

" _We **miss** you."_ A sound, not quite rustling, could be heard now, getting closer. The glow grew more intense.

Miles crouched by the doorway, fingers locking beneath the door.

"Mama."

Not yelling at Cream to cut out the creepy whisper was almost as hard as the door was to open. Metal bit into his fingers. He _heaved_ , and the door opened up a few inches with a metallic shriek.

" _We hear you!"_

More. He gritted his teeth, grunting with exertion. Six inches.

"Mama."

SHUT UP!

Eight inches.

 _Something_ slipped around the corner in Miles' peripheral vision, something blue. He didn't turn to check. Ten inches. Good enough. He tugged at Cream's ears, fumbling to untangle them.

More things drifted from around the wall, preceding something much larger following along behind. The sound grew louder, like a chorus of whispered voices.

Done. Cream slid down to flop over his tails. Miles lowered her to the floor while laying on his belly, sliding into the darkness, now blind to the thing behind them.

"Mama."

" _We're_ _ **coming**_ _, Bunny Bun."_

Easy. Plenty of room once his head was through. Miles twisted over, grabbing Cream's arms and pulling her through. He could actually see the things from this angle, long strips of cloth, part of a dress? Shimmering blue. He... could... _see_ the wall through them.

 _Ghost_? Miles could feel himself starting to hyperventilate.

Focus!

Thud. Cream stopped partway through.

"You fathead!" Miles hissed. He lunged upwards, cranking the door an inch wider in another shriek of metal. His fingers throbbed.

" _We_ _ **see**_ _you, Mister Prower."_

Choking down a scream, Miles wrapped his tails around Cream's wrists, practically throwing her inside before launching himself after her.

Blue light flooded the room from the gap they'd squeezed through, revealing yet another storeroom, its metal shelves bare except for a few crates. Miles didn't have time to check. Two glowing feet stepped in front of the door, and semi-transparent tendrils of cloth slipped beneath the door, probing after where they'd been, creeping along the ground towards where they _were_. Miles whimpered he scrambled deeper into the storeroom, tails catching on the shelving as he squeezed between them.

"Mama." Cream's eyes were wide open, her pupils so wide her iris was invisible. A tendril reached out towards her outstretched hand.

"No!" Miles smashed his tails up into the shelf he was under. It slammed into the one before it, sending both tumbling forward like dominoes to slam down across the doorway, slicing the tendrils in two.

The thing _howled_.

" _How_ _ **could**_ _you?!"_ Cream wept, slamming against the door hard enough to buckle the thick metal frame inwards.

"Mama." Cream whispered, tears streaming from unseeing eyes as she reached towards the monster screaming outside.

Twice more "Mama" slammed into the door to the sound of an avalanche of steel each time. Miles scurried over to Cream, wrapping his own trembling arms and tails around her rigid frame.

The glow retreated. The whispering ceased. Cream went limp in his grasp. Just the two of them alone in the dark once more.

Miles didn't let go until the lights came back on.


	3. Chapter 3

In all the world, Miles had only three things he was truly afraid of.

Three _perfectly rational_ fears that kept him up at nights.

Three fears that could not be ignored.

First was lightning. An obvious enough fear for anyone who had seen what lightning could do. Especially in the air. Especially to _things_ in the air, as he so frequently was.

Second was ghosts. He _knew_ ghosts were real. He'd seen them, been chased by them. Fought them on multiple occasions. Hostile, ultimately unstoppable, and for someone like him what they represented was even more terrifying. That if _they_ could come back from the dead…

Miles' shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

Out of habit, he glanced over to where Cream lay, still motionless but for the softest of breaths, still, thankfully - though he hated himself for being thankful - silent.

He hadn't seen anything resembling a window in his earlier explorations, only mile after mile of ruined corridors, and the room that _Mama_ had trapped them in certainly had nothing approaching natural light, so he had no idea how long it had been now. Long enough to scavenge some components from the collapsed ceiling. Long enough to search through the crates of the storage room to find a few rusty tools - wrench, pliers, a bent screwdriver, and long enough to turn a paperweight that had once been a portable arc welder into a functional, if currently unpowered, high yield plasma cannon.

So… about thirty minutes maybe?

Miles rubbed the back of his head with a frown, feeling the hard metal rimmed hole at the back of his neck. It was dry at least. Hopefully he'd stopped leaking brain juice everywhere. Hopefully they both had.

Right now he was busy weaving together electrical cables into a handle for the welder's old chassis, turning it into a clunky, if serviceable, toolbox. Normally he would have kept them in the hammerspace about his person, an instinctive use of chaos energy reasonably common among mobians where time and space was warped into small pockets to hold things, and had the added advantage of not needing to wear trousers.

Unfortunately this also stopped working in the absence of sufficiently proximate Chaos Emeralds, which was currently the case.

Since the Chaos Emeralds were generally scattered across most of the planet at any given time, that his hammerspace wasn't working was in itself almost as useful a piece of information for figuring out where they were as it was incredibly inconvenient for _escaping_ where they were.

Finished. Miles looped the boxy container over his shoulders to test. Not nearly as ungainly as having Cream on there, though he was probably going to have to carry one or the other in his hands anyway.

… Hm. Maybe he should have made a wheelbarrow instead?

"Mama."

Miles' gaze snapped back to Cream. Her eyes were open again, staring at the door once more.

Time to go. Grimacing, Miles headed for the nearest functional wall light, wrench in hand.

No time for finesse. From the last time he had around four seconds before power went out. He slammed the wrench into the surface as hard as he could, shattering the cover. Three. A shower of sparks singed his fur as he fished a cable from his energy cannon and poked it into the hole. Two.

Fire.

A green bolt of plasma hurtled into the wall opposite the door, exploding against the metal bulkhead. Metal glowed orange from the heat.

One.

The energy cannon fired once more. Miles yelped and dropped it, a scorch mark on his fur where it had overheated.

The lights went out. Miles squeezed his eyes shut.

… To acclimatise them quicker, not because he was terrified.

His own breathing rasped heavy in his ears.

"Mama."

Alright, move by touch. Here was the overturned shelf, climb over, walkway… His singed hand encountered Cream's… foot. Great. Miles opened his eyes, spots still dancing across his vision from the energy blasts. Orange light from the bulkhead mixed with blue from the doorway behind. Miles groaned.

The wall was still intact.

"Mama." Cream sat up, her hand raised towards the door. He could hear the metal of the door groaning as an overwhelming force tried to tear it open.

Well if it could do that, so could he.

"Hold this." Miles hooked his case over her arm, dropping the wrench into it before crouching onto all fours.

Metal shrieked behind him.

Supporting his weight with his hands for a moment, Miles span his legs fast enough to become an orange blur around him, building up momentum.

"Mama."

Now.

He dropped, tucking his head forward as his feet slammed into the ground, transferring all that built up energy into a forward roll - a spin dash.

Like revving a car engine then suddenly putting it into gear, Miles lurched forward, his entire body a living wrecking ball as he slammed into, and _through_ , the damaged wall and out the other side. Centrifugal force spun molten metal off his body as he landed, smoking and sore, on the other side. A wide open space. A dozen pairs of glowing red eyes turned towards him in the dark.

" _There you are!"_

No time.

Heart pounding out of his chest, Miles doubled over on himself, tails spinning to reverse his momentum before leaping back into the storeroom, various projectiles striking behind him. Blue light blazed into the room now, almost too bright to look at directly. He leapt, diving through the hole. There at the doorway, against a backdrop of writhing metal, a huge human woman stood, in an endlessly long blue dress, endlessly long chestnut hair, both coiling out like the tentacles from some deep sea nightmare, tangled around a little rabbit that dangled from her grasp, a tiny silhouette against her light.

"Cream!"

" _Mister Prower!"_ The woman called out lovingly in Cream's voice, her expression one of delight as she reached her arm out to him, beckoning him closer...

Something smashed into his face, halting his forward rush. Miles caught it numbly as it fell.

His tool case.

" _Run away, Mister Tails."_

"Creeaam!"

Ghostly tendrils extended towards him from in front, even as heavy metal footsteps approached from behind.

Tears running down his face, Miles complied.


	4. Chapter 4

A hero would have stayed.

A hero would have saved her.

Miles lay motionless in the rubble of a collapsed stairwell, breathing slow as he stared at the lumbering badnik. A rusted metal mantis, its projectile blade forearms long gone and missing one eye, it crawled down the corridor peering from room to room, metal legs pattering across the metal floor as it came closer and closer to his hiding spot.

But he had never been a hero, and his track record at saving people thus far was approximately minus forty-six thousand, rabbit included.

Well, _two_ rabbits now.

" _Mister Prower? Are you in here?"_

This was not some scary movie where he was the brave protagonist, overcoming all odds through courage and determination despite the monsters that hunted him.

The badnik drew closer. Miles held his breath.

" _You need to come home, Mister Prower. We're all worried about you."_

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Miles pounced, slamming into the badnik's legs, sending it clanging to the floor with a frightened scream. The mantis raised its stubby half-arm in helpless defense as Miles leaned forward, sliding his hands into the seams of its armour.

" _Please let us_ _ **go**_ _!"_

The thing with Cream's voice twitched feebly in his grip as he peeled its chestplate open with a shriek of rust.

" _It_ _ **hurts**_ _."_

These models of "animal" badnik, first invented when Doctor Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik had been new to the mad scientist gig and apparently willing to do _anything_ to avoid having to learn to code, contained small animals to power them.

Miles tore out another sheet of metal, exposing the skeletal rodent suspended within, wires leading from its skull.

" _Why?"_

Pulling out his wrench from his pack, Miles slipped it past the skeleton and twisted. A cylinder popped out of place, spilling cold liquid over his fingers before he caught it.

And when you had a gerbil for a brain, you needed to keep it alive somehow.

" _We just want to **save**_ _you."_

Miles raised the cylinder to his lips, swallowing a sickly sweet liquid that he very much _hoped_ was sterile.

" _Please-"_

"Would you kindly shut _up_." Miles smashed his wrench into the badnik's speech chip, cutting Cream's misery short.

Crushing the can and tossing it aside, Miles resumed his dissection of the badnik, ripping components free of its metal frame and hurriedly dropping them into his pack. Not even a minute later the door pinged open at the far end of the corridor. Miles perked his ears towards the sound and leapt back into the shadows as three heavy E-series mecha clanked out of the elevator, wasting no time in firing a salvo of gas cannisters down the corridor as they approached the fallen badnik's hollowed out husk.

" _Oh, what a_ _ **naughty**_ _young thing you are."_ Cream tutted from three speakers at once.

But Miles had already left, hunting for his next prey.

Only heroes cared about fighting fair.

* * *

Wherever this place was, it was _deep_.

Miles had spent at least a day at this point haunting the corridors of the facility, building the map of his surroundings in his mind even as he built new and better tools with his hands.

So far he'd climbed thirty-seven flights of stairs - or the equivalent, a good number of those he'd skipped by flying up an elevator shaft - and travelled over a hundred miles all without ever seeming to leave "General Storage", or seeing so much as a hint of the surface.

Well, the earth's crust was, at its thickest, fifty thousand meters. At an estimated four point three meters height per floor, that would theoretically leave him with eleven thousand floors or so left to climb, but given that being even a subterranean depth of five thousand meters would raise the temperature in here enough to boil water… Maybe this place was at the bottom of the ocean? Or built into a mountain?

Well, that first one would explain why Sonic had never come looking for him. Not many mountains a hundred miles across though.

The lights flickered. Miles tensed. He hadn't seen _Mama_ since… since Cream had been... But that was because he bolted in the opposite direction the moment she got close. It… she(?) was still stalking after him at her own implacable pace however much he tried to evade or trick her.

At least he was in the open, comparatively. A long open corridor. Plenty of room to-

The lights went out entirely. Miles crouched low to the ground, hackles raised as he tried to watch both entrances for a sign of her presence.

…

Nothing. She couldn't be on the other side of a wall, right? Miles nervously peered over his shoulder.

" _What are you looking for?"_ An unfamiliar voice whispered by his ear. A cool pink glow flickered into being behind him, sending his shadow looming up the wall over him.

"Eyah!" Miles jumped high enough to smash his head against the ceiling. The glow flickered into nothingness as he landed back down with a thump, clutching his skull.

"Ow. Ow. Owwww... What was _that_ all about?" Miles sat blinking in the dark, confused and sore. The last thing he needed was _more_ ghosts.

… Wait.

Miles looked down.

There, on the floor in front of him, was a single word, scrawled in luminous pink at his feet and crackling like static:

 _RUN_.

Well that was terrifying.

And vague.

Miles reached into his pack and pulled out a flashlight cobbled together out of a badnik's optical sensor and a metal rod that had once been an arm. A beam of red light illuminated the corridor.

At least he could see where he'd be running _to_ now, even if he had no idea what he was running f-

The wall erupted behind him.

Miles leapt to the side as the ceiling partially collapsed. Girders and electrical cabling crashed down where he'd been sitting.

A clearly mobian figure stepped through the newly made hole. Glowing semi-transparent red spines trailed from its head. Miles swallowed drily as he scrambled to his feet, weaving unsteadily..

"... Huh?"

He raised his flashlight. The red beam reflected off grey metal, revealing a metal crest protruding from the figure's forehead.

An E-121 Merl. A "Gizoid" unit.

Based on ancient mobian combat robot designs that Doctor Robotnik had "borrowed", Merls made use of a sophisticated learning AI to adapt and improve as data was provided, making them some of the most formidable machines in his army. Like most of his inventions, Eggman had mass produced them, then forgot they existed as he moved onto newer more exciting things and never looked back.

The gizoid lunged forward, fist swiping through the place Miles' face had been moments before. Again. Again. Sheer air pressure buffeted Miles' face as he slipped around a three punch combo he had seen many times times in the past. Why was this bot so much better preserved? Everything else around here was falling apart, but this Merl looked brand new.

" _Stop running and let me hit you!"_

It wasn't Cream's voice. It was _Knuckles_.

The strongest mobian Miles had ever met, a brutally effective combatant, and one of Miles' oldest friends. The gizoid was programmed with his data, or… _possessed_ by his ghost? He wasn't even dead... right? But it _did_ look like Knuckles' features were superimposed over the robot's. Transparent dreadlock spines dangled from its smooth metal head, the protruding knuckles of his gloves sticking out of metal hands… Killbot & Knuckles? Well at least with a robot body there was something he-

"Ah! Hold! On!" Miles flew up to dodge a fist moving fast enough to ignite the air in its wake, using his tails to drift backwards away from each brutal punch. "Can we talk about this?"

" _I'll just let my fists do the talking!"_ The bot lunged forward, slamming a lightning quick jab into Miles' chest.

Purloined machinery he'd so long salvaging from badniks exploded out from his pack as Miles hurtled backwards down the corridor, skipping along the floor like a rock on a lake before coming to a halt, upside down, on the other side of a wall.

" _Still got it!"_ Knucklesbot pumped its fist, shadowboxing after him.

No good.

Miles flipped upright, coughing up blood. Fortunately his already backwards velocity and angle of impact had turned most of the impact into additional momentum. A clean hit would have punched clean through his body.

Metal pounded against metal as the gizoid thundered after him, illuminated from behind by the flashlight Miles had dropped. He wobbled into a combat stance with a grimace. He wasn't going to win against _any_ incarnation of Knuckles in a straight fist fight, and a Knuckles he couldn't trick or tire out stripped away almost all of the ways he'd normally close the gap. And it wasn't leaving him time to _think_.

Unless…

"Look out! I'm getting away!"

Miles pointed up the corridor behind it. The Merl slowed for a brief moment before speeding up once more.

Meh, worth a shot. Knux had fallen for worse over the years.

The Knucklesbot reached him, launching through the air towards him with another burning punch. Miles met the impact with a sideways strike from his tails, wrapping them around its wrist and spinning with the robot's momentum to send it flying past him even faster than it started. Knuckles' surprised yell dopplered up the next hallway.

Miles straightened, flicking flames off his tails with a pained grunt. Normally he'd run for a vent, but with their mobian chassis a 'zoid would have no problem following, and thanks to its learning software, the longer the fight went on, the less he'd be able to use simple tricks like this to survive.

A red streak forewarned him that the Merl was approaching again. Miles leapt backwards, flying backwards with his tails as he checked his case. The original hallway flashed by around him as he navigated its debris by memory, the gizoid was closing the distance fast.

"... Phew. Still there." Miles pulled a stocky metal case out and held it aloft, holding his finger above the trigger. Timing was everything.

Even closer now. The Merl raised its fist back, ready for another strike set to turn him into a fluffy smear on the floor.

Now.

"Pew pew!" Miles pressed the button. A red optical sensor flashed at the end of the case.

The Knucklebot dodged to the side, letting the light shine harmlessly down the corridor.

" _Too easy!"_ He lunged forward again, crushing Miles' flashlight beneath a metal foot as he went.

"Yeah, well that was just the remote."

Miles leapt upwards, catching the air with his tails to let the bot surge by underneath him.

Right as the satchel's worth of bombs that had scattered across the corridor behind him started to explode.

" _A trap?!"_

A metal hand groped for Miles' bare foot, barely missing as the Merl's momentum carried it straight into the cluster of detonating power cells.

"Don't worry!" Miles called down, grabbing a wire dangling from the ceiling as the floor caved in beneath them.

" _Taaaaaiilllss!"_

"Most are on timers!"

A moment later, as the Knucklesbot slammed onto the floor below, the next batch of bombs detonated around it. The entire facility rumbled as floor after floor collapsed in a chain reaction.

"Have a nice- Agh!" Miles swung himself aside as the already damaged ceiling on his level gave out, sending a fresh avalanche of metal tumbling down into the abyss after it, several glowing red eyes joined it as badniks fell from the level above.

Too close. Miles coughed in the thick dust of the once-corridor, his whirling tails the only noise in the dark.  
And he'd been about to drop a one-liner, too. _Sonic_ would have managed to drop a one-liner.

Miles sighed. He was _never_ going to be cool.

The lights flickered back on above, failing to illuminate the new abyss that stretched out below him.

"... Stay buried."

Rubbing his aching chest, Miles flew upwards into the light.


	5. Chapter 5

Miles had _tried_ to be a hero once.

Of course he had. The only thing he'd ever received from his parents was a note telling him two things: his terrible, terrible name, and that he was going to save the world. So when people came along with world domination in mind, he had done exactly that: saved the world in the most efficient, permanent way possible.

And then Sonic had come along.

Miles peered into a vacant tube, much like the one he'd been in, much like dozens more he'd seen since he arrived in this area. A human skeleton, far too small to be an adult, floated within, dangling from a cable drilled into its upper vertebrae. The monitor screen beside it read simply:

_> HAPPYDAYS.EXE :: SUBJECT ERROR_

Miles rubbed the back of his head, feeling the hard metallic ring of the hole hidden beneath his fur.

Sonic, without ever knowing his past, without ever even asking, had showed Miles how _wrong_ he had been. Simply by being himself, Sonic had shown that being a hero was about saving _people_ , rather than the world.

" _Mama, it hurts."_

A chill went up Miles' spine as a dim yellow wisp of light sparked in front of him, then was gone.

He'd been seeing a lot of _that_ since he got here too. No robots, no Mama, no Cream. Just the whispers. Just the lights. So, _so_ much worse.

Miles shook his head, trailing his fingers across the glass, leaving streaks in ancient grime as he moved onto the next one, this one a mobian. Cat maybe? How _old_ was this place?

It didn't look like there wasn't anyone here to save.

And that was probably for the best. However inspiring people like Sonic and Knuckles might be, however they might manage to save _everyone_ , enemies and friends alike? The moment Miles was alone, the moment things got _difficult_ , he went right back to his true self. Risk-reward analysis, acceptable losses, threat elimination, his own survival. He went right back to asking questions that no hero should ever ask in the first place.

Questions like: "Where did all these dead children leave their stuff?"

 _"Where did you_ _ **take**_ _her?"_ A wisp of silver demanded as it flared briefly in his path before fading.

Miles paced on, numbly mapping the maze of rooms in his head.

* * *

Well, that answered that question.

Before Miles was a small mountain of children's clothing, in thousands of styles and dozens of sizes, human and mobian alike. Testament to more horrible fates than Miles could reasonably extrapolate at a glance, though his brain had already quietly filed that under "things to not think about" and moved onto safer, more mundane topics to distract itself. Like clothing.

Clothing had never really been a big part of his life.

Gloves and shoes were, of course, indispensable. The best feature of humans was doubtless the lack of fur on their palms and soles. Catching your finger fur while opening a door was the absolute _worst_ , to say nothing of trying to work on electronics with all that static. But in terms of actual clothing he had worn maybe half a dozen shirts in his life, mostly as sportswear.

Generally this was true for most mobians, at least male ones. Years of contact with humans had produced something of a fashion culture catered towards mobian girls, but generally speaking most species of mobian were fuzzy enough, and mobian territories warm enough, that they never actually needed clothing to protect them from the elements, and hammerspace provided ample storage for day to day activities.

Now, however, Miles found himself considering, for the first time in his entire life, whether or not to put on pants.

The reason, of course, was pockets.

More than anything else, Miles was a technician. The more storage space available, the more parts he could salvage and, more importantly, the more things he could build.

Normally, that would be using hammerspace, a perfectly safe storage option that wouldn't, for example, lead to him losing all his bombs while being punched through a wall by an angry ghost robot while only keeping his remote detonator because of the dumb luck that it was too clunky to fall out.

So far he'd already pulled on a short sleeved blue and red hoodie with a handy kangaroo pouch pocket in the front, and now he was staring at a green pair of cargo pants with a conflicted expression. There were _so_ many pockets… But somehow the designer hadn't thought to design them to accommodate two fluffy tails with an at times shaky relationship with the laws of physics. Which would be a big reason why he wouldn't like wearing pants even if it was socially expected to do so.

Finally, after deliberating long enough for his brain to successfully repress whatever it had needed to repress, Miles reached a decision. Folding the legs back and over, he threaded them into the top of the trousers and out through the tail hole then tied them together, forming a pair of "straps".

Tada! A backpack. Roomier than the now dented tool case he'd rigged together, and he could even close it with the drawstring. Miles smiled to himself absently as the lights flickered above. Things were starting to look up.

At least until he noticed something being scrawled in glowing pink on the floor beside him.

_R_

_U_

_N_

_!_

The unseen scribe had started to underline the message when the lights went out. Miles dove into the pile of clothing as shimmering blue light shone into the wide storage area. Tendrils of blue creeping outwards, Mama expanded to fill the available space, sealing the other exits even as her main body floated where she had entered.

" _Mister Prower. We've_ _ **missed**_ _you so."_

How?

Miles burrowed deeper into the clothes pile, eyes poking out from beneath his hood.

He hadn't seen or faced a single badnik since reaching this level. He'd even avoided dismantling the tubes and their computers for parts, since he hadn't been sure if she could detect that too. But Mama should have no idea where he was, especially given the massive scale of this place.

But now...

_" **Cream** has been asking for you as well."_

Miles heart sank to the pit of his stomach. His caution had backfired. Rather than evading the notice of the largest threat, he'd simply left himself helpless against it.

Mama's laughter filled the hall.


	6. Chapter 6

" _Really, Mister Prower, this would be so much easier if you would stop_ _ **hiding**_ _."_

Yeah, he'd get right on that.

Miles burrowed deeper into the mound of clothing, swapping directions randomly as he scrambled away from the last place Mama had struck.

" _Weren't you happy with us? We were happy with you."_

Four seconds. Miles curled into a ball, making the smallest space possible. A moment later Mama's hair sliced down, tearing through dozens of feet of clothing and shoes like air before coiling back. The pile shifted around Miles as clothes fell to fill the void her strike had left.

" _We_ _ **love**_ _to make you happy, after all."_

Keep moving.

Miles dragged through the dark, straining to breathe beneath the pressure.

Depth didn't matter. She was striking all the way to the floor each time.

" _Can you really **be** happy anywhere else?"_

Four seconds. Curl.

Blue light momentarily brightened Miles' vision as her strike passed scant inches from his head, tearing out clothing in a great fountain. He "flowed" into the void, a dozen pairs of sneakers rattling down on his head from above.

She was toying with him.

And he was running out of time.

Every strike tore more of his hiding place away, scattering it across the floor outside the pile, where strands of _her_ lined the floors, waiting to snare him the moment they felt his weight.

" _Poor thing. So frightened... "_ Mama sighed, her stolen voice tinged with sadness. " _So lonesome."_

Strike. Miles' nose breached the surface. He gulped down air.

" _Why are you still fighting so hard?"_

Strike. They were getting more frequent. Miles crawled towards the impact. She didn't seem to hit the same place twice.

" _Well, I suppose your determination is what we love_ _ **best**_ _about you."_

Another strike. This time Mama sliced across the pile from the side, sending the top half crashing down. Miles yelped, momentarily exposed at the top of the remainder, staring up a crisscross of blue and pink lining the darkness far above.

Depth mattered after all.

" _ **There**_ _you are!"_ By Cream's excited voice she could have been playing a game of peekaboo.

Wait. Pink?

Miles twisted over, scrambling down as multiple blue tendrils bore down on him from above, dragging himself aside as they lanced through the spot he'd been laying.

" _ **Almost**_ _, Mister Prower."_ Mama giggled. " _Get you next tiiime."_

Miles gritted his teeth, crawling towards the far side of the pile. What had those pink markings been?

Strike. Another layer off the top. Miles kept moving. Deeper, faster.

The edge.

Miles poked the top of his head out of the pile, blue hood covering all but a tiny part as he peeked upwards at Mama's writhing blue coils.

And a pink arrow.

 _Dozens_ of pink arrows. All pointing towards the same place. A black gap in the web of blue.

" _I_ _ **see**_ _you!"_ A blue tendril streaked down from above. Miles ducked back under the clothes as it lanced through the space he'd just been.

Great. If his invisible helper was giving him a way out, then all he had to do was fly to the unreasonably high ceiling, figure out how to access that way out, and avoid being shish-kebabbed by a ghost-kraken the whole way.

Miles scrambled upwards. Now he was worried he didn't have enough clothes.

" _We think you look_ _ **so**_ _cute in your little coat, by the way."_ Mama giggled again. " _We can let you keep it if it makes you_ _ **happy**_ _."_

The sentiment would be touching if she wasn't punctuating her sentences by trying to impale him. Miles scrambled upwards, hoping she didn't sweep the top off the pile again as he approached the top.

" _We can give you anything you-"_ Mama cut off mid sentence, multiple tendrils snapping out at the sign of movement. Blue fabric fluttered back down to the pile, torn apart by the impact of five glowing strands at once.

Miles whimpered, still safe in the pile below, at least for the moment.

He was going to get torn apart by a ghost.

And worse, it was probably going to stitch him back together again afterwards.

Focus.

Dropping his weight onto trembling hands, Miles began to rev up a spindash.

Clothing and shoes flew _everywhere_ from a rapidly deepening hole around him. More and more tendrils snapped out as Mama lanced them out of the air one by one.

Alright… Now or never.

He released the spin dash, hurtling forward and up over the "ramp" of clothes he'd created by deforming the clothes pile, sending even more exploding out behind him as he hurtled towards his target like a bullet.

Strips of transparent fabric and hair lanced towards him. Miles sailed through the air with all the manoeuvrability of a hummingbird as his tails spun into life. _Left._ He twisted. A blue streak lanced between his ears. _Above_. He propelled forward, yelping as he lost a clump of fur from his tail.

Miles slammed into the dark ceiling with a hollow metal bang.

Ventilation duct. No grate.

Not great.

Heh.

Miles crouched, using his tails to hold him upside down against the ceiling for a moment as a pair of ghostly fingers streaked towards him.

Drop… now.

They exploded into the ceiling, smashing the duct loose from the ceiling. Miles lunged after it, snagging a gloved fingertip around sheared metal as it swung wildly through the air. He barely had time to raise his tails before his head slammed into metal through their layer of fluff.

Miles didn't stop. Head ringing, he pulled himself into the free hanging air duct and ran, the duct falling behind him piece by piece. The blue glow faded instantly.

" _Well done_ _ **again**_ _, Mister Prower!"_ Mama's delighted laughter tinkled after him.

As Miles leapt from one falling section to another a vast crimson orb passed into view for a moment, standing alone in the darkness of the hall where Mama had been.

" _Don't worry, we can wait."_

Miles blindly accelerated, panting. Was he still falling? Was this section secure? Was she chasing him?

" _You_ _ **always**_ _come back to us in the end."_

Miles slammed into the end of the duct with another brain rattling impact. He barely had a moment to register the pain before he slid off the dented metal and down into the dark shaft below.


	7. Chapter 7

Miles did not land well.

In many ways, that didn't matter. The same size/mass issue he had with exerting his physical strength applied here as well. He literally could not fall hard enough to cause himself a severe physical injury without something drastically changing his terminal velocity.

In other ways, that _did_ matter. While he couldn't hurt himself with an uncontrolled descent of, by rough estimation, six hundred feet, the air duct he was in was a very different story. Two heavy mechs stared at Miles with an air of mechanical surprise.

The third reached up to pull him off its shoulders.

"Sorry!" Miles flipped in place, slamming his tails into the mech hard enough to tear off its already dented head. "I can't stick around."

He hopped down into the mech's neck cavity as two electrical bolts crackled after him, striking harmlessly against the metal chassis before it dropped forwards onto the remains of the ventilation shaft, decanting the fox to the ground beside the second heavy mech.

" _Hello, Mister Pr-!"_

Miles ducked between the bot's feet, pulling its legs along with him to send it crashing face first onto the floor. Metal canisters bounced off the floor as the final mecha opened fire.

Ugh. This was why he _avoided_ these things. They were relentlessly trigger happy with these gas attacks. He couldn't even salvage them for parts since they tainted the entire area they were in, and since the gas was odourless he had no way of knowing if or when it had cleared out. Assuming more didn't arrive in the interim.

Slamming into the back of the fallen heavy, Miles kicked off at the third, hopping into a high speed spin with his tails into its midsection. Its top half fell to the floor, a ring poking out from its chassis where it had been powering the machine.

Huh. He hadn't realised they actually had rings. He should- Miles covered his face with a sleeve, head already swimming. Nevermind. He grabbed the ring, waiting a moment…

Right, no hammerspace. He slipped it into the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie with a frown.

Time to get out of here, and quick. One way corridor, no side rooms. Unusual. The place seemed to have a pretty modular design, and down this low he'd have expected to have ended up back in General Storage.

So…

Miles paused. Once again, pink writing was forming along the floor, or more precisely, an arrow, pointing towards one of the doors. Exclamation marks formed beside it as he watched.

"... Alright, alright. Fine already."

Miles started jogging. The door ahead opened to reveal another corridor, also straight, this time devoid of any robots. Just the arrow. He picked up speed. A T-Junction. Arrow to the right. Crossroad. Straight ahead?

Not a single robot.

Finally, dozens of twists and turns later, Miles emerged into another large hallway, thick metal crates piled all the way to the spacious ceiling.

"... In here?"

The lights flickered. Miles chose to take that as a yes.

Only…

 _Where_ in here?

There were no more arrows, no instructions, just the clustered crates, long corroded and, from his first few checks, mostly empty. He couldn't even see through to the far side past them.

Well, it was either try the maze or head back the way he came. Miles hesitated. Wandering into a spooky block puzzle maze because a doodle ghost told him to was almost in the top sixteen worst ideas he'd ever had. But...

The lights went out.

"Whuh-" A pink glow blazed up behind him. Miles ducked down with a surprised gasp as something whistled past his head, rolled forward as it crashed into the floor behind him, and spun round, slamming his tails into it as it thrust out to follow.

"Yeow!"

Miles flicked his aching tails away, backing up in the dark from his assailant. Pink spines protruded in a neat bob, hinting at a silvery grey head beneath.

" _Hold it_ _ **right there**_ _, Tails!"_

A Merl. This time channelling another of his closest friends.

Miles groaned.

Amy Rose.

As the lack of the clan name "Hedgehog" in favour of a surname attested, Amy was a native from Little Planet, another planetoid in the solar system that was theorised to be the original mobian homeworld. Its irregular orbit brought it into a "near miss" with Earth each year, a celestial event that lasted about a month before the two celestial bodies parted ways for another eleven months.

During one such close encounter years ago, Sonic had arrived on Little Planet while thwarting Robotnik's latest scheme, saved Amy as a byproduct, and earned himself a first class interplanetary stalker for the rest of his life.

The silhouette of a hammer passed in front of the Merl's ghostly hair, and it dashed forward. Miles lurched sideways, blindly trying to both remember the layout of the room and predict the path of the hammer based on the tiny amount of illumination coming from her head.

While she didn't have Miles' speed, and not even a fraction of Knuckles' _ridiculous_ raw power, Amy was a far worse matchup for him since, unlike Knuckles, she was a _tool-using_ mammal. Amy handled her hammer with brutal force, acrobatic grace and-

Hard metal smashed into his side, sending him crashing through a pile of crates with a crunch. Miles yelled in pain, straightening his arm to pop the elbow back into place with a wince as the ring in his pocket burned out. He scrambled blindly away from his landing spot, feeling his way between crates as he tried to make distance between them.

-And extreme unpredictability. Which her Merl had inherited, along with a boost in raw physical power with its greater size to make for an even deadlier opponent. And in the dark he couldn't even see to use his reflexes to compensate for his inability to predict her movements.

There was an enormous crash of metal on metal. Miles looked up to see the Merl spinning overhead, having launched herself with its hammer to vault over the fallen crates… And right down towards where he was standing.

Darn her unnatural stalker powers! Miles rolled forward as the Merl landed hammer first, swinging his tails into its back to send it stumbling forward.

" _Why did you do it, Tails?"_ Amy's horrified voice crackled from the Merl's blank face as it slammed the base of its hammer into the floor, using it as a pole to convert the momentum right back around, slamming itself into Miles. " _All those_ _ **people**_ _."_

"Stop messing with my head!" Miles fell backwards onto his tails, using them like a spring to launch back at the Merl, both feet colliding with its head with a metal crash.

The robot stumbled back, its hands silhouetted across its face.

" _Mess with your- You_ _ **killed**_ _them! You tore them_ _ **apart**_ _!"_

So, psychological warfare as well now. Great.

Well, Amy had no idea about his past before meeting Sonic, so that just made it easier to conclude this Merl was working from Mama's script. Tiny pink lines were starting to fill the darkness around him. He stared up at them, following them with his eyes as he tried to comprehend what they were showing.

" _Knuckles was right."_ The sound of the Merl's metal hands gripping onto its hammer was the only warning before it started charging again. " _I've got to stop you before you hurt anyone else!"_

Miles bumped into a crate trying to back away further, still staring at the lines...

Ah hah.

Miles ducked right into empty space, switching to full speed as he raced into the maze of crates twisting and turning at top speed.

The doodle ghost _wasn't_ the Amybot's trap after all - unless it was an unnecessarily complicated one. It was painting the corners of the boxes. A tiny line of pink along the outside angles. Just enough to give Miles the layout of the room while using the bare minimum of whatever ghostly ink it was using. He could navigate easily with this.

That just left the killbot with the hammer.

" _You're crazy if you think you can get away from Amy Rose!"_

Miles leapt up as the crates exploded in front of him, their markings vanished the moment as they left their original position. _Blackness_ slammed into him, carrying him backwards.

 _Move_. Miles pushed himself "up" from the flying crate and jumped clumsily aside just as it smashed into the crates behind him. He screamed as his leg _crunched_ ; the meat in a metal sandwich.

He slid head first into the floor, dragged down by the falling crate, pain smothering his thoughts. He barely registered another metallic crash. It was launching again.

_Move._

Panting through the pain, Miles kicked the crate away from his shattered leg, dragging himself free just as the pink glow hurtled down from above, hammer slamming down where he'd just been.

" _That's_ _ **enough**_ _, Tails. It's over. Give up. Let us_ _ **help**_ _you."_

The Amybot put its foot on his chest, pinning him to the floor as it raised its hammer over its head.

Pinning him except for two things, that is. Miles' tail coiled around the Merl's back leg and yanked as his second snapped up into the Merl's jaw. The bot fell backwards with a surprised yell, hammer smashing behind it to the floor.

The Merl twisted over in his grip, trying to crawl for the fallen hammer. Miles lurched forward after it, coiling both arms around the gizoid's throat as his tails coiled around to bind both of its arms.

" _Ah!"_ Amy's voice cried out, metal legs flailing, each motion sending fresh bolts of agony up his mangled leg.

Miles clenched his jaw, pink quills swaying millimetres from his nose as he tightened his various grips.

Focus on the metal beneath.

" _Please-"_ The Merl gave a strangled gasp. " _Tails. It's_ _ **me**_ _."_

"Robots don't breathe." Miles dropped his still functional knee into the small of the gizoid's back, metal beginning to cave.

" _S… Sonic… save..."_

With a final heave, Miles tore the gizoid's head from its body. Hydraulic fluid sprayed his face.

"Just a fake." Miles dropped the head to the floor and crawled away from the body, trembling with shock and adrenaline.

"Just a fake." He wrapped his arms around his chest, rocking back and forth in the dark as tears streamed down his face.

"Just a fake."

The lights stayed off for a long time.


	8. Chapter 8

He'd had worse.

This was Miles' mantra to pain.

He'd had worse, he'd _done_ worse.

He wasn't Sonic. He couldn't dodge forever.

So whenever he had failed in his life, rings or not, he had endured. He had kept moving, either because he refused to slow Sonic down, or, like now, because stopping would mean he would never start again.

Burning fur assaulted his nostrils as he worked.

Miles _hated_ the smell. It hijacked his memories right back to his childhood. Napalm and feathers, crawling through volcanic vents as he cooked…

He'd had worse and done worse.

Not _much_ worse than this, admittedly. Crushing was one thing that worked particularly well against mobian anatomy. A lot of his leg was now in a lot of places. Nothing a few hundred rings couldn't fix, but if he'd harvested every heavy mech he'd seen down in this place he'd be not even close to halfway there. And it wasn't like he could jog back there now and ask nicely.

But he was _resilient_.

He was _resourceful_.

Also?

With a final waft of burning fur, Miles finished the job. He stood up with aching slowness, servos whirring until he reached his newly increased height.

He had a mostly intact mobian-style combat robot and a brain/machine interface embedded in his skull.

Miles stretched his newly hybridised legs. The faint twinges of pain beneath the metal were almost reassuring as the momentum gently rocked the shattered bones sealed within. Reminded him that he was still a fox somewhere deep under there.

"I always wondered what it would be like to be taller." Miles mused idly to the Merl's head. "... Not much different."

Most of the gizoid's innards had been laid carefully into his backpack now, while his hoodie now incorporated a good part of its skull and armour plating. Use every part of the robot buffalo, and all that.

Too bad this particular buffalo wasn't an animal powered version. When had he last had something to drink? He'd have to make that a priority soon.

Another arrow carved itself onto the floor, so many now the floor was more pink than metal. Miles sighed.

"Yeah, yeah. Keep your fur on, Doodle."

Careful to avoid ripping the cable now protruding from his neck, Miles pulled his hoodie back over his head, distributing its weight comfortably around his shoulders before hooking the hammer with a metal foot and flipping it up to his hand.

"Hm..." He gave the weapon an experimental swing as he walked, arrows stretching out before him. "... Where the heck do I put it though?"

The best thing for hammers was hammerspace, after all.

* * *

"So this is the place, huh?"

Miles leaned back on his hammer, gazing up at a massive pair of rusty metal doors with a frown.

Ugh. Humans always made everything so _big_ all the time.

The lights flickered as Miles stepped up to the doors, but they slid open without any persuasion on his part, revealing both yet another tube room, and something he hadn't seen for a long, long time.

Another living person.

A human female, her long chestnut hair floating free in the gel interior, hung suspended in the tube, unmoving, her eyes closed.

Miles was no particular expert on human physiology - why would he be, after all? His time spent around them was minimal - but she looked to be… ten or so? Hard to tell, humans got so big so quickly. In the tube above her was a single large gem, the same brilliant pink as her scribbles, and suspended over her head by a halo of wires.

Hm. _Not_ a chaos emerald. Miles rubbed his furry chin. Obviously, he still had no chaos connection. But they were the wrong cut too. Only six sides, so not a Sol Emerald either. Pity, since they were pretty compatible once you got the hang of it.

The stone wasn't the only abnormality either. A second glass wall surrounded the first, and the area within was conspicuously devoid of the layer of grunge that had permeated the rest of the facility. Steel lockers stood immaculate inside, and the panel lights inside glowed brighter than anywhere else he'd seen in the facility. It was bright enough to dazzle him after spending so long in the dull twilight.

A terminal display against the outermost glass wall flickered into life, symbols rapidly flashing up on its dusty display.

_> \\\\(OwO )z_

Miles glanced at the floating human. The glowing pink lines began covering the entire tube until only her face was showing. Miles glanced back to the terminal. A new message had replaced the first:

_> (#/_ __\\#_ _)_

"Is that... you?"

_> d-(^_^;)-b_

Not a ghost after all. _That_ made him a lot happier.

"So you can't use words?"

_> Nope. ='(_

Miles gazed half-lidded at the screen.

"So… Do you want me to get you out of there?"

_> d-(-_^ )z_

Miles swallowed drily.

Well that hadn't worked out great last time he'd done it. But… He was on the right side of the terminal this time, right?

"Okay, where can I-"

The flashing text disappeared, replaced by the more standard screen, a simple onscreen keyboard below it.

_HAPPYDAYS.EXE :: SUBJECT #0000000001_

_TEMPORAL SYSTEM :: ONLINE_

_STATUS :: NOMINAL_

_FEED :: ROAMING :: SUBJECT#0000000017_

_C:: > __

Setting his hammer against the glass, Miles cracked his knuckles and got to work.


	9. Chapter 9

It was a much smoother exit from HappyDays than he'd given himself.

Miles leaned back from the terminal, stretching as fluid gurgled from the tube. Pink scribbles vanished from all across the room as the cable disengaged from her skull with an audible click.

How much damage had he done when he'd ripped that same cable out of his head?

Out of Cream's?

Miles flinched.

The glass opened and the girl dropped from the tube onto her hands and knees, shivering and coughing. Miles started towards her when she squealed, making frantic shooing motions before she crawled quickly over to the lockers beside the tube. Miles raised an eyebrow as she climbed inside, slamming the door after her.

"Are… you okay?"

A muffled yell came in response, too hoarse to be made out clearly through the door of the locker.

"Al...right? Let me know if you need me, I guess?"

Maybe she was intimidated by him? With his new legs he was still less than a meter tall and still at least forty-seven percent fluff by his estimate, but who knows? Humans were weird after all.

Miles shook his head. He could deal with her when she calmed down a bit. Limping towards the tube he turned his attention to the jewel still suspended within.

Familiar. _Achingly_ familiar. But from where?

He reached out, hovering upwards to brush his fingertips across its flawless rose surface.

The stone disappeared in a sparkle of light, its metal halo tumbled down unsupported.

Miles pulled his hand back, feeling the familiar _weight_ of something entering his hammerspace.

He stared at his hand, trying to recapture the feeling, to-

"Hello!"

Miles turned around in surprise, having momentarily forgotten the room's other occupant. The girl loomed over him, now wearing what looked to be a black unitard with an oversized red and yellow coat dangling open over it. Unusually for a human, she wore white gloves.

Miles rubbed the back of his head, finger brushing the wire connecting his robotic prosthetics to his spine as he did. He felt weak at the knees for a moment.

Oops. That was one habit he was going to have to break.

"Uh, hi. Who are you?" Keep low, keep still. She was scared after all, and he didn't want to-

The girl grabbed him. Miles yelped as he was hauled into the air, a furless cheek rubbed over his own.

"Oh my goodness you are even _cuter_ up close!" The girl squealed, her face flush with delight.

"Ah! Put me _down_!"

What happened to fear? Miles stiffened helplessly. Human contact was an inherently worrying prospect at the best of times. While most Mobians weren't much stronger or faster than humans - frequently less so because of the size difference - their natural affinity for chaos energy and robust physiology made them far more resilient. Sure, a human was more likely to _survive_ trauma - their ability to handle shock was _incredible_ \- but with a Mobian he didn't have to worry about something minor like accidentally applying a few hundred thousand newtons of force to their bodies because he wasn't paying careful enough attention when he moved.

Finally the girl put him down, her cheeks flushed and a grin on her face.

"I'm sorry. I've never met a dream before. Especially such an _adorable_ one."

"I'm _not_ a dream." Miles grunted. His adorableness, intact and largely unchanged since his earliest memories, was something of a sore subject at this point.

"Of _course_ you are." The girl smiled, her blue eyes locked on his own. "I've dreamt of you before, after all. I even used to have a doll of you." She tapped her lips. "Unless... I'm _your_ dream? Are you _dreaming_ , Mister Fox?"

Miles flinched. For several reasons. "Call me T-..." He paused. This place was too dark for that name. "Call me Miles. What's your name?"

The girl paused, surprise on her face.

"Hm... I don't remember anyone ever giving me one."

"Alright, do you remember _anything_?" Miles waved at the machinery around him. "Do you know anything about where we are?"

The girl flicked a hand through her hair, gazing about her with a dreamy expression.

"I... remember being put in here when I was very little… It was _dreadfully_ boring."

She brightened. "Then I started dreaming of _you_ , Miles. You and your friends."

Miles frowned. She'd been monitoring him through the connection? Wait.

"Friends?"

The girl nodded, pulling part of her hair through an oversized metal nut she'd fished from her pocket. "You know, the rabbit girl with you earlier?"

"Did you see where it took her?" Miles ears perked up, but the girl shook her head.

"Sorry. I was dreaming of _you_ , not her." She threaded the rest of her hair through a second nut, forming two scruffy pigtails sticking out on either side of her head. "Am _I_ cute? I used to be cute. Now I'm so tall and… big."

"Yeah, you look great, Doodle." Miles mumbled, rubbing his chin. His conversational autopilot had been honed by years around Amy Rose.

"Hm?" She tilted her head.

"Oh, uh, it's just what I've been calling you until now." Miles rubbed the back of his head, almost disabling his legs again. "I'm sorry, I can-"

"I love it!" Doodle spun on a pirouette, her coat splaying about her as the lights flickered above. "... Oh. Wait. I _do_ remember one more thing, Miles." She smiled again.

"Hm? What is it?"

"Mama is going to be _super_ mad that I'm out of bed."

The lights flickered again.

"Mention that sooner!" Miles' gaze snapped from side to side. There was only _one_ entrance to the room, and no vents.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about the door." Doodle smiled in that dreamy, detached way once more as her gaze drifted upwards. "She's waaay too mad for that."

The lights went out. A metallic shriek sounded from directly overhead.

Oh no.

Miles raised his hood, flipping down a visor from its lip that he'd crudely fashioned from the Merl's optical sensors, and the room reappeared in greyscale.

"Time to get out of here!"

Stepping close to Doodle, Miles grabbed her hand in his own. She squeezed it, peering around in the dark with more curiosity than fear as Miles yanked her in the direction of the door - slowly, by his standards.

The shriek repeated, louder than before, and a tendril, still blue despite his nightvision, speared down from the ceiling.

It didn't open. The massive rusty door that had risen so easily before, now was a massive multi-ton weight.

A second tendril stabbed down. Mama roared through the widening hole.

" _ **Prower!"**_ Cream's sweet voice was gone, only a buzzing, mechanical approximation left in its place. _" **Give her BACK!** "_

"Stay here!" Miles launched off the door, back towards the centre of the room. Blue speared around him as he slipped from side to side, sparks flying as his metal feet trailed along the floor behind him.

Console. Miles flipped, landing feet first against it. He snatched the hammer laying beside it and pushed off again, denting its casing as he blasted off once more, corkscrewing through a loop of ghostly hair that tried to tighten around him…

Miles landed in a spin and just kept on spinning, momentum carrying him, hammer outstretched, into the door with a resounding crash that resonated all the way up through his arms and into his brain. Doodle cried out in surprise beside him, crouching down with her hands over her ears.

Mama roared once again, Cream's voice now replaced entirely by wordless digital fury. Miles could see her main body through the widening hole now.

He glanced at the door. It had buckled in the middle slightly, but was still very much intact.

Darn it. He slid the handle of the hammer underneath, trying to use it as a lever without success.

The weight problem again. Even if Doodle joined him on the hammer their combined weight wasn't nearly enough to shift the massive door. He _might_ be able to shift it himself, but there wasn't room to fit both hands in the gap he'd made.

Alright... Time for some applied desperation.

Miles hopped on the hammer, springboarding off it towards the ceiling, trying to ignore the vast blue shape now lowering itself into the chamber from above.

 _Higher_. He flew.

The bulk of Mama dropped to the floor with a boom, her coils already surging outwards towards Doodle, ignoring him entirely.

 _Now_. Miles flipped in midair, metal boots clicking into the ceiling for just a moment before he launched, tails spinning to propel him back down towards the floor with all the force of an angry god.

Impact. Miles screamed as he collided feet first with the head of the hammer hard enough to snap it off. Like a seesaw, he and it slammed into the floor and the gate crashed up to the ceiling.

"Miles!"

He struggled to stand, one of his robotic legs unresponsive. Felt like the impact had jellified the broken leg inside it too.

Miles shook the stars from his vision, groping at the back of his head to try and push the wire back in. He'd had worse. Keep moving… Well, keep fighting at least.

It wasn't loose. Probably something in the leg itself.

The door hit the top of its opening with a crash, then started to slide closed once again.

"Doodle! Run!" Miles snatched up the hammer's handle with one hand, standing one legged as he swept it into a dozen lunging tentacles. He had to keep them from reaching Doodle before she could escape. He couldn't let Mama do that again.

By _chaos_ he hurt.

Mama's serene form loomed towards him, a hundred coils bearing down on him.

Behind her, a metallic grey shape leapt down from the floor above, mane of glowing blue spikes anointing its head and body. Miles grimaced in pained recognition.

A hand yanked him back through the door just before it slammed shut.


	10. Chapter 10

Thirty-seven seconds.

Miles counted in his head. Listened to the whirring buzz of a body sawing through solid steel.

He knew already that was how long it would take.

That was how long he'd watched Sonic. How familiar he was with his every move, his every quirk.

Miles dangled from Doodles' grip as she ran, _so_ slowly, completely blind except for his muttered directions.

"Stop running here. Put me down for two seconds."

Even blind in the dark, there was an absolute certainty to Doodle's movement. She placed him beside the pile of empty crates. Miles slammed into them with his tails, sending them cascading down onto the doorway.

That earned them four seconds.

He hopped back into Doodle's arms, turning his attention back to his leg as she started running again, her chin laid atop his head.

"Turn seventy degrees right in three seconds."

She followed everything he said without hesitation, without the need for him to explain particulars he'd already worked out.

He just wished she'd stop rubbing her chin against his head and _giggling_ while he was trying to work.

A spark arced from his doubly broken leg, momentarily causing his night vision to turn agonising white. He wiggled his foot experimentally.

Perfect.

Thirty-two seconds.

"Okay, Doodle, put me down."

She complied, though he could see her pouting. At least briefly before he tore the goggles off his face, hopping up to pull the goggles onto her head.

Miles heard the door give way. He unshouldered his backpack.

"Here's my pack. Don't stop running. If you get cornered, throw the cylinder and cover your eyes."

Crates started crashing about the room.

"Are you sure?" A hand fell onto his shoulder unseen. "This dream never works out well for you."

"I'm sure. Don't stop, no matter what."

" _Hey Tails. Long time no see."_ Sonic sounded more horrified than delighted.

Miles flinched, turning to face the Merl that housed his hero. He was a second early.

" _Who were you talking to?"_ Transparent blue spines swept back, bouncing softly with poorly contained energy. The need to _move_ embodied. Or at least emulated.

"I won't let you take her." Miles spun the hammer handle around like a staff, sending sparks flying as he smashed it into the ground. "Even if it's you."

He didn't want to go through this again.

" _Uh, whatever you say, little buddy."_ The Merl held out its hands. " _We can just talk, alright?"_

Talking sounded _so_ much better than fighting. Miles glanced towards the fallen chamber. Mama's tendrils were already creeping through the hole the Sonicbot had made.

"Just walk away. Let us leave."

" _I… Just come back with me, Tails. Whatever Eggman's done, we can_ _ **help**_ _you."_

"Please." Miles glanced to the side to Mama's growing light. "Don't-" His voice cracked.

" _Don't make me do this, Tails."_ The Merl mirrored his plea and beat him to the finish. Just like usual.

Miles sighed.

Even if it sounded like him.

Even if it acted like him.

Even in the dark.

"...Just a fake."

Miles struck the ground with the hammer pole once again. Sparks illuminated his surroundings for a fraction of a second.

He ran. The Merl followed a microsecond later.

Left or right?

Miles leapt, tails spinning to carry him straight over the top of the barrier, preserving his momentum, scraping the jagged end of his pole across its surface to get another snapshot of the maze below with the spray of sparks.

Mobility was the key.

As fast as the hedgehog could move when he was at full speed, as gifted as he was at using chaos control to warp space around him and change direction in an instant, Miles had kept up with him all these years. He'd caught _up_ to him, _outraced_ him.

Never, _ever_ fought him.

Crates smashed down behind him as Mama continued her inexorable crawl through the maze.

Not for real.

A blue streak surged through the darkness below, ramping up the side of the crates. In a moment, the Merl would launch upwards, trying to knock him out of the sky.

Not all out.

Almost dreamily, Miles shifted to the side, allowing the Merl to cut through the air where he'd been flying, then slipped the other way as the Merl tried to catch him on the way down.

Because he knew, with perfect clarity, that this was the worst possible matchup.

Miles dropped after the Merl faster than it could fall, swinging his pole into it with a metallic clang that sent it careening back towards Mama.

Sonic was the _best_. The fastest thing alive. He could accelerate up to Mach five, he could outrun bullets _-_ not just dodge them, but move _faster_ than them. He could spindash fast enough to drill through solid metal, use his momentum to hit hard enough to bring even heavy hitters like Knuckles to a standstill. From the hedgehog's shadow, Miles had watched Sonic face off against some of the most incredible powers in the universe and come out on top again and again.

Miles dropped to the ground at full speed, the sparks from his trailing feet lighting his path as he turned corner after corner, counting under his breath.

Three.

Two.

One.

" _You're too slow!"_

The Merl rounded the corner behind him just as Miles reached his next turning. Dead end. A _cul de sac_ of boxes.

Just as he'd planned.

" _Aggghh! Tails!"_

He launched over the top again as the Sonicbot skidded to a halt behind him, buying precious seconds as it turned around and ran back the other way.

Yeah, this was a _terrible_ match up.

For the Merl.

Sonic's weaknesses were few, as a person and as a fighter, but they did exist. He had no way of changing direction in midair without chaos control, he didn't think things through, and for all his speed, he _wasn't_ strong - even Amy was stronger - so he was even more dependent on momentum to damage things than Miles was, without many of Miles' tricks to generate that momentum.

Miles hopped from wall to wall, sending one crate after another tumbling down behind him, never expecting to hit the Merl, just slow it down, just kill its momentum. Never let it make use of its full speed, never gave it time to think.

Miles was _definitely_ not the strongest, smartest, toughest or fastest thing, alive or otherwise. He didn't even know Sonic better than Amy, despite having known him longer and fought beside him more times than he could remember.

Miles went to land on a crate only to find it missing. Must have been dislodged during his last run. With a grunt he oriented down, plunging blindly into the dark as the gizoid soared past, barely missing his head. It had turned the crates he'd dropped into a stairway to get at him.

But that didn't mean he was _bad_ at those things.

Miles landed heavily, unable to prepare for impact, and in that short moment the robot caught up, glowing spines a blur as he charged in. Miles barely parried the impact with his pole, sending it spinning out of his hands into the dark. The Merl bounced off, landing nearby, a flurry of super quick punches raining down on Miles' armoured frame.

" _Tails,_ _ **please**_ _! Snap out of it!"_

Miles raised his hands, shielding his face as he weathered the blows, unable to see anything but the robot's glowing blue spikes to consider blocking.

Like Shadow, the one being on the planet that Sonic could never truly overcome, Miles was a _generalist_. Fast enough to be able to handle Sonic's normal blitz tactics while having no great weakness for him to exploit, no major flaw beyond his own unwillingness.

Miles snapped his tails out, slapping the Merl head over heels into the air before following through in a pirouette to strike the airborne robot a second time. It smashed through a pile of crates to the side.

That should buy him a few seconds.

" _... Amy?"_ Sonic's anguished voice whispered from the other side of the barrier.

Miles sparked his foot against the floor, trying to spot the handle of the hammer. Where was Mama? Close now. He could see her-

A miniature freight train slammed into his side one second early. Miles tasted two kinds of metal as he punched clean through a crate and slammed headfirst into the one beyond it.

Blue spines glowed in the dark, crossing the intervening space in an instant before crates crashed down where he'd passed through.

" _What did you_ _ **do**_ _to her, Tails?"_ The Sonicbot slammed down on him as he tried to stand, smashing him back to the floor. The arm it had crashed into flopped weakly at his side. A metal hand clamped down on it as the robot shook him violently back and forth. " _Weren't you friends? Aren't_ _ **we**_ _friends?!"_ Sonic's voice sobbed.

"Robots can't cry." Miles muttered, eyes wet from the pain. His legs had stopped working again.

Overhead, he could see a red glow shining over the top of the crates. Mama was coming.

" _Shut up!"_ The Merl shook him again, slamming his head back into the floor. " _Chaos, Tails, why couldn't you just_ _ **talk to me**_ _?!"_

Miles weakly flailed with his working arm… Too short. He couldn't reach past the bot's grip.

"Miles! Catch!"

A metal pole fell into his open palm. The hammer's handle. Miles grabbed it and lunged in the same movement. It gave momentary resistance before penetrating the gizoid's metal chest. A gurgled gasp escaped its speakers as it stumbled forward, metal hand snapping up to his neck. Miles braced in preparation for its final strike.

" _I... believe in you… little buddy. You can… fight… this."_

The gizoid went limp, hot coolant pouring over Miles as it collapsed over him.

And Miles giggled, tears streaming down his face.

"Just a fake."

Arms wrapped under his body, dragging him free from beneath the Merl, leaving the fallen blue spines behind them in the dark.

"The _real_ Sonic would have beaten me."

The pain just made him laugh harder.


	11. Chapter 11

Miles jerked awake, pain blossoming in his arm as the movement tore needles free of his flesh.

Oh no.

A wall of glass sealed him from the dimly lit chamber outside, sticky, stinging slime clung to his fur, creeping up his neck..

No no no no.

He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't move. Arm wouldn't move.

Miles screamed, tails thrashing.

Doodle's face appeared at the glass, hand raised in a wave.

"Good morning, Miles! Can you feel the sunshine today?" Her breath misted the glass between them.

"Doodle?! Get me out of here!" Miles tried to push himself up with his one working arm, but slipped, sliding deeper into the slime.

"Sure thing!"

The tube opened. White gloved hands hauled him out. Miles clung to them, shivering as the frigid air assaulted him.

"How are you feeling, sleepyhead?" Doodle gave a placid smile as she plopped him wetly to the floor in front of her, towelling gel from his fur with a scrap of old fabric.

"Terrified!" Miles groped at the back of his head, feeling only the vacant metal hole there. "What happened? Where's Mama?"

"Hm? After I grabbed you? You don't remember?"

"I don't remember anything after I..." Miles twitched. "After I beat the Merl."

Doodle tapped her lips. "Well, alright. First your eyes turned black, and you started crying _blood_ everywhere."

"... What?"

The girl burst out laughing.

"I'm just teasing. Can you imagine?" She brushed a hand through her pigtail before leaning down over him. "No, you handled it much better this time. You just shouted a bit and fell asleep."

Miles felt a _click_ in the back of his skull. _Feeling_ filled his legs, along with something else. He raised his other arm, feeling an odd weight tugging through his shoulder.

The oversized claw of a mech, streaked with rust, even more heavy and unnatural than his mechanical legs.

"Oh, do you like it?" Doodle tilted her head to the side.

"You made this?" Miles blinked, flexing the arm.

"Sorry it doesn't match with your feet. I had to make do with what I had while I was on the elevator."

"And you hooked me up to the tube's life support systems." Miles mused, rubbing a claw over the bloody marks on the fur of his arm.

"I thought you might be hungry."

Miles stared at the girl, her chestnut pigtails even more of a mess than before, her red and yellow jacket stained with soot and grime. Doodle stared back at him, her blue eyes wide.

She gradually started to grow pink.

"Wh… why are you staring at me like that?"

"Huh? Oh. Sorry, just… thinking." Miles rubbed the back of his head with a grin. Felt like she'd redesigned the wiring into his skull as well.

"Yeah, you were really… _Miles_ away." Doodle grinned, making twin finger guns at him.

Miles sighed. His name was just an endless source of other peoples' entertainment. She must never discover his surname.

"Still... " Miles rubbed his jaw with his new hand, partially to get used to moving it. "Thanks for taking care of me."

"No problem." Doodle smiled. "You're my dream after all. I have to take care of you."

"I'm not a dream, Doodle." Miles glanced down at his stained fur and robotic limbs. He looked more like a nightmare at this point anyway.

Doodle ignored him, staring off into space with a distant look.

"Mama will finish climbing up to this level soon." She blinked, turning her gaze back to Miles. "Hey, before she catches me and puts me back in my tube, can we go sightseeing? I always wanted to see places like the rabbits room, and-"

Miles' ears snapped up. "The rabbit's room? Cream?"

"Oh, that's what you called her, isn't it?" Doodle nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, that's right."

"You know where it is?"

Doodle stood, excitedly spinning on one foot. Too bright and happy for the grim surroundings. "I do! Can we go? Can we?"

"Sure, let me get my stuff." Miles glanced around for his hoodie and wobbled to his feet. His new centre of balance was going to take some getting used to. As was his arm dangling all the way down to his knees.

There. Miles grabbed it, glad it was short-sleeved as he forced his claw through the fabric with the pop of surrendering seams. He slung the pack onto his back and-

Stopped.

There, scattered in the corner of the room was the crumpled skeleton of a small hedgehog. The tube's original occupant. A dull blue wisp of light hung before it, as though staring down at it.

"I..." Miles trailed off. He didn't know if he wanted to apologise for disturbing the ancient child's resting place or thank it for its use.

Reaching down, Miles rearranged the bones correctly, placing his hand wordlessly atop the hedgehog's skull before turning away.

The wisp had vanished by the time he had finished.

Miles didn't look back.

* * *

Fourteen floors.

Seventy-eight hallways.

One hundred and seventeen badniks.

No Merls. Thank _Yamaguchi_ , no Merls.

A distance that would have normally taken him less than ten minutes with time enough spare to smash one of Eggman's boss robots had taken _hours._ Miles now had enough empirical data to reach conclusive answers to three hypotheses.

First: Doodle was a genius, at a level where determining exactly how _much_ of a genius she was became more or less impossible, even for him. Even visualising the layout of a superstructure the size of this facility was a feat that most organic brains would cough at. The probability of him finding something the size of a single room would have been less than a fraction of a percent if he didn't have Doodle's knowledge of its location and absolute grasp of direction to guide him.

Second: Doodle was an overwhelming failure of an athlete. So much so that Miles had a suspicion that she hadn't so much "come back to save him" before as "finally caught up with him". Quite how she managed to escape Mama while carrying him with her afterwards remained a mystery.

Third: Every single Mobian that had ever talked about carrying humans around with them was a _dirty liar_ that had been playing a long term practical joke on him that had only just come to fruition.

He was, admittedly, smaller than most people his age - smaller than a lot of people younger than him too, which hurt. But being, charitably, the size of a human toddler it was physiologically _impossible_ for him to support Doodle's mass without flying. Either she was so top heavy that any acceleration would send her spinning over his head to face plant on the floor behind, or, if he lowered her centre of mass, her limbs and torso were all long enough to tangle with his own legs and trip him over. Running holding her hand wasn't feasibly either. Even barring the risk of dislocating her shoulder by accelerating normally, there was no way her legs could move fast enough. Basically the only way anyone his size could have managed was if she had curled into a ball and laid across his outstretched hand, and even then, she was large enough that if he stopped suddenly she would change from passenger to projectile in a blink.

The only thing that had been even remotely practical had been to rig together a crude buggy out of badnik parts and then drag it along behind him. Even then, it was slow going to the point that not only was he building things as he ran, but whenever he encountered obstacles he simply dropped his harness and ran on ahead, dealt with it, ran back a few times to drop the remains of the obstacle into the buggy for Doodle to strip down for parts, then collect the harness after it finally coasted up to him.

… Huh. This was probably how Sonic felt about him.

The thought made Miles' chest ache.

Finally, thirty seven badniks and fifteen hallways later, they arrived. Doodle cried out, almost falling as she leaned to point it out, and Miles let the buggy, now ten times heavier with all the parts and gadgets, slam into him. Sparks sprayed as he braked.

The door was average size, unmarked, and unremarkable. Miles took a long, steadying breath. Doodle leaned against his head from behind, fidgeting excitedly.

Even if Cream wasn't there, even if there was an army, or Mama herself to fight, even if it broke his heart again, hopefully he was about to get some answers.

He stepped forward. The door opened.

"... Oh _Penders_."

The _rabbits_ room.


	12. Chapter 12

Eighty percent.

Miles ran metal fingers across a glass tube containing a young rabbit, suspended in clear liquid, twitching occasionally within as she dreamed what were hopefully only the _happiest_ of days.

Fur a little bushier, ears a little longer. Pudgier and shorter, even younger than he remembered... But still unmistakably the face of his fellow prisoner in paradise.

 _Cream_.

IQ, height, physical appearance… Even personality traits. Around eighty percent of a person could be attributed to genetics, maybe more.

Miles moved to another tube.

Another Cream. This one slightly older, slightly bigger than the last. Still smaller than "his" Cream.

Another. Even younger.

His claw left a deep scratch in the glass as he moved on.

A dozen Creams, all of them younger than the rabbit he had torn from the tube, the youngest just a baby, recognisable as much from the markings on her fur as the face she would grow into.

How long had he been in this facility?

"They're so _cute_." Doodle remarked dreamily, dancing between the glass. "If _I_ was this small, wouldn't you love me so?"

"You'd be easier to carry at least." Miles muttered distantly as he tapped a console screen. An interface flickered into life, this one far less limited than its HappyDays counterparts, chock full of useful data. He tapped his lip with a claw as he worked. "They're _perfect_."  
"See? I knew-"  
"No, this. See? They're perfectly symmetrical."

Doodle leaned close, tugging on a ponytail. "So they've been probably been cloned using a single duplicated X-chromosome?"

"Mm. That must be why she's a little different to how I remember her originally."

"Seems it would be harder to do it that way though."

"I'm sure he had his reasons. Eggman was more likely to cut corners than do any unnecessary work."

Reasons that would make perfect sense if he'd been trying to ensure a particular trait. Females rarely displayed mutations compared to males, since the short Y-chromosome allowed for recessive traits on the single X-chromosome to manifest without requiring two copies. So if Cream had had a particular trait Eggman had wanted to avoid or keep, he just had to pick and mirror the X-chromosome that had the right genes he wanted.

Well, he couldn't picture the doctor having strong opinions on rabbit children from Nights Casino, let alone much desire to clone them, but Mama had mentioned using "a friend" to try and stop him from escaping HappyDays. With a machine that messed with memories, and an endless supply of Cream to stick those memories into, it would be almost seamless. Year after year...

"... Happy unbirthday to me."

Doodle made a curious noise by his ear.

"Forget it. Can you guess how much time we have until Mama gets here?"

"Hm. She's about an hour or two behind us now I'd guess." Doodle shrugged.  
"Thanks. Can you get us up to somewhere I can see the stars?"

"Of course!" Doodle clapped her hands together. "That was one of the places I wanted to see!"

"Great." Miles nodded. "If I'm right, that will be the perfect place to find some answers."

* * *

Stars twinkled overhead in patterns similar yet unfamiliar, twinkling through an endless sky of glass and metal, girders and platforms extending overhead where Miles and Sonic had raced together so many years ago to stop Eggman's latest plot.

And dominating the vast bulk of the skyline, commanding most of Miles' attention as he sat alone atop a decrepit artificial gravity generator, was a green and blue sphere, half its surface shrouded in black.

And not a light to be seen on its surface.

"Long time no see." Miles laid back, metal claw outstretched as if to encompass the earth in its grip. "I missed you."  
The lights flickered. He could hear the rhythmic hiss of metal writhing across metal as Mama ascended.

"And by my calculations, maybe a week until you're gone again."

Such was the orbit of Little Planet, after all, and the colossal space station Eggman had built around it like an eggshell.

The lights went out. The glow of the earth above illuminated the open space in a dull blue.

"Hello, Mama."

" _Hello, Mister Prower. Have you decided to come back to me at last?"_ Individual strands of hair alighted either side of him as Mama raised herself to his platform.

"I have a few questions before I'm ready."

" _You always do."_

"How long has it been?"

" _Two hundred and thirteen years."_

Miles nodded.

"And your function?"

" _I must protect and entertain Doctor Robotnik's children in his absence. They have all been relocated to this facility for their safety."_

Miles nodded again, eyes closed as he finalised his theory.

Subject # 0,000,000,001

The first victim of at least one billion. With chestnut hair and blue eyes just like her father's. She was even wearing one of his trademark red and yellow jackets.

Doodle.

Robotnik had cloned himself a daughter, and stuck her in the safest possible place. In Happy Days, with a caretaker to watch over her in his absence, and the Little Planet's local version of a chaos emerald - a Time Stone - to keep her nice and fresh.

But, to Eggman, the whole world was his. Logically, therefore, _all_ children were his children.

And, whether because Sonic had finally defeated him for good at some point, or because his own nature to forget everything he created included his own genetic daughter, the Little Planet's orbital space station, dark and seemingly depowered after Robotnik had been defeated there, had continued to expand and evolve towards its intended function. Year after year, more and more children had been abducted by a fully automated doomsday-weapon-cum _-_ creche. Stolen faster than new ones could be born until finally there were none left to take.

The good doctor had ended the world, not by some cunning scheme or clever plot, but by careless programming and overengineering.

And then there was him.

Subject seventeen.

"Why am I still... here?"

" _Unknown."_ Mama's angelic face loomed over him as its main bulk slithered up to his platform. " _Your anatomy has been infused with large amounts of chaos energy. Both your physiology and neurology are non-standard."_

"And you cloned Cream to keep giving me a reason not to leave."

"O _ther subjects must be overclocked to share your Happiness_ _. After multiple more compatible companions expired as a result of prolonged contact, Seed operations were extended to subject four hundred and ninety-seven to provide a disposable pool of subjects."_

Miles nodded a third time.

The longer he had spent with Cream, the faster he had been killing her.

Over and over again.

For hundreds of years.

"I'm sorry."

" _Apologies are unnecessary. Merely inform me of her location and all will return to normal. You will be safe and happy with me forever."_

"You don't understand."

Miles activated the artificial gravity generator, flipping the gravity one hundred and eighty degrees. Mama's tendrils scrabbled for purchase before she fell towards the new _down_ , slamming through several girders with an almighty crash. Miles floated down after it, drawing an energy cannon from his pack.

"I'm sorry because I'm going to kill you."


	13. Chapter 13

Miles was not passive by nature.

He leapt from one coil to another as they struck towards him, grinding down them on two feet to slide ever closer to Mama's core.

He fired his cannon again, severing a coil to open a gap before tossing a bomb from his pack down into it.

He had _learned_ passivity as a tool. As desperately and as thoroughly as he had learned anything. Be passive, be cute, be _helpful._ Don't be _bad_.

There was a resounding shriek as the bomb detonated. Miles slammed through crumbling strands to collide with Mama's surprisingly hard stomach before launching away once more, shooting a gravity generator as he went. Mama fell away from him with another earth-shaking rumble while he simply flipped over, tails spinning.

But he had never really changed.

" _This is futile."_ Mama, blue visage perfectly intact, shook her head. " _Let this end before you hurt yourself, Mister Prower."_

"Worst case I can survive orbital re-entry." Miles stated blandly. "Can you?"

A baby-faced killer was still a killer.

" _You_ _ **need**_ _me, Mister Prower."_ Mama punctuated her sentence with a girder, torn from the wall and hurled at him at high speed.

Miles ran down it, energy beam charging again as he leapt from coil to coil, platform to platform, exploiting Mama's need to hold herself in place against his relentless gravity manipulation.

" _Because only_ _ **I**_ _understand you."_

"Then you should understand how much trouble you're in."

Miles fired again. The beam impacted against a curtain of hair to no effect. The girder fell back from above, he leapt up, slamming both tails into it to send it flying down at Mama like a spear. She lurched aside from it with a metallic shriek as it tore a good chunk from her dress.

"You made me fight those fakes. You made me _kill her_."

Miles landed on a wall and kicked off. A tendril slammed straight through it and swung the entire section at him like a club, slamming him through the air with a clang that reverberated through the metal around his body. Rings tumbled from Miles' pack as he peeled himself off and dove down just as it smashed into a girder, sending a shower of metal tumbling down at him from above.

" _What fakes?"_

Mama raised her arms. Elevators all across the floor squeaked open to reveal dozens of badniks.

"Don't lie to me!" Miles slammed his tails into a gravity generator as he fell by, momentarily slowing to a halt in midair as gravity overcame his downward momentum. He fired, cannon shot slamming into Mama's core as she fell past him.

" _Subjects thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and forty all attempted to breach this facility to recover you."_

The badniks that had survived being slammed into the ceiling fired. Miles pulled a mask from his hoodie to cover his face as metal canisters and bolts of electricity blended together with more traditional projectiles hurtling towards him.

" _And who do you think stopped them for me?"_

Miles hit the ground rolling, body punching through three lumbering badniks in a row before leaping up over a swipe of Mama's tendril that bisected five more.

"Shut up."

" _You believed you were escaping."_

"Shut up!" Miles flicked a bomb from his pouch and slapped it towards Mama with his tails. She parried with a fallen badnik's corpse. The blast of the explosion destroyed another badnik next to her.

Darn it. He only had one left.

" _As I said, Mister Prower. I_ _ **understand**_ _you."_

Miles leapt forward, aiming for a gravity generator only to be cut off by a wall of Mama's hair. He ran up the side of them to burst out the top of the wall just before it coiled shut around him.

" _You have_ _ **three**_ _fears, Mister Prower."_

Move. Don't listen. Miles slapped his tails back into a tendril, severing it and snatching it from the air with his claw as he leapt away. The badnik's projectiles pinged across Mama's body harmlessly as they fired where he'd positioned himself.

" _Lightning."_

The remaining Heavy Mechs simultaneously fired their shock guns at him as if to punctuate Mama's statement. Miles swung his stolen tendril like a whip, coiling around a badnik as a dozen bolts struck him before conducting harmlessly away through his armour and arm down the tendril into the robot below.

"Can't beat physics." He grinned before hurling the smoking badnik into its compatriots like a bowling ball.

Mama just smiled at that, glowing faintly beneath the earth's blue glow.

" _Ghosts."_

She raised her hands again, another elevator began to rise.

"You're a monster, not a ghost." Miles soared upwards to avoid them, weaving between Mama's endless coils to latch onto a girder overhead. "I'm fine with monsters."

" _And_ _yourself_ _."_

Miles flinched. The elevator rose, Cream standing alone at its centre.

_"That you will lose control."_

"Cream!" Miles ducked one tendril after another, running back and forth along its length until the entire length was a hopelessly tangled mess before grinding down one of the tendrils to leap before her. Bait or not, with this many bullets flying around he couldn't take the risk of her getting hurt.

" _And that nobody will be able to stop you when you do."_

Cream gazed up at him, brown eyes wide with fear.

"Cream!" Miles landed before her, arms outstretched. "Come on!"

"Murderer!" Cream pushed him, sending him falling backwards. "I won't let you hurt mama!"

" _So every time we play this game, I call back their memories. To_ _ **remind**_ _you why you keep coming back to me."_

Miles kicked back as a tendril sliced down where he fell, leaving a gaping hole in the metal floor.

" _Because beating your friends was so_ _ **easy**_ _for you."_

"No!" Miles raised his cannon, but Cream stood between him and Mama, her arms outstretched. He discharged the bolt at a heavy mech instead, blasting it off its feet.

" _If you are with me, Mister Prower, then you will be_ _ **safe**_ _. There will be no darkness to make you suffer."_

Miles kept moving, hopping between coils, slashing badniks, ducking bullets.

" _I will clear your mind. I will set you free."_

He couldn't take off. Couldn't attack. Running out of room to move.

" _Giving you everything you want, any_ _ **one**_ _you want. Staying with you forever."_

Miles dropped, back to the floor as tendrils bore down on all sides, rearing back like scorpion tails poised to strike.

" _Because love is eternal. And so are you."_

Gravity inverted. Mama fell away from him. Miles managed to lurch to a nearby platform, smashing his head hard as he landed. Mama's blue tendrils winked out, leaving coils of metal in their wake as Miles' limbs went limp.

"Sorry we kept you waiting little buddy." Cream zipped through the air to land next to him, blue spikes protruding from her head.

"Let's show them what we're made of!" A red spiked Cream glided by on unpracticed ears, colliding with a badnik midair. "Oh no!" She punched it aside to land beside them, fists raised.

"You okay, Tails?" Cream tumbled down through the air, raising a length of metal taller than she was to slice her way through a curtain of metal coils. She quickly stepped next to him, her hand finding its way to the back of his head, clicking his cable back in. "Let's show this hunk of junk who it's been messing with."

"Thanks, guys." Miles wiped his eyes with the back of his glove. "Good job, Doodle."

Cream helped him up.

"Just say the word, buddy. It's your show this time."

Miles nodded, glancing from side to side.

"Sonic, Knuckles, you're not used to your new limits, so stick taking on the badniks. Amy, keep hitting gravity generators, and watch for its coils." Miles bit his lip. "And… I'm so, so sorry."

Cream punched him in the shoulder.

"Later. Gotta juice!"

The Creams separated. Miles dove down, claw raised.

" _Why are you doing this? Your friends will_ _ **leave**_ _you, Mister Prower."_ Mama hurled a rig of metal scaffolding at him.

"Perhaps." Miles tucked in his tails and dove straight through it, raising his cannon.

Cream stood between them, arms raised, tears in her eyes.

Miles landed feet first on Cream's head, slamming her into the ground.

"But I'll never leave them." He fired into Mama's head point blank. She rocked back.

Gravity flipped again. Rather than let Mama fall away from him this time, Miles lunged at her, smashing his claw into Mama's chest over and over again until finally something gave. He tore away a patch of dress as a hundred coils of blue bore down towards him. Liquid silver blood gushed over him.

"And I'll _never_ let them die for me." Pulling his last bomb free, Miles punched it deep inside Mama, shielding the hole with his own body so she couldn't reach in to pull it out again.

" _Well **done** , Mister Prower."_ Metal spikes slammed into Miles, more than he could bat aside with his tails, more than he could withstand. His hoodie shredded, metal plates tumbling down as a tendril started burrowing through his back.

His implant failed, Miles barely registered a grim red orb before him, a young rabbit's body suspended within, dull eyes staring vacantly at him, endless wires protruding from her body.

" _I'm so proud-"_

The bomb detonated.


	14. Chapter 14

"I hate you."

Cream - his Cream - glared dully at him from her seat. The baby cradled in her arms nursed from a bottle of life support fluid.

"Sorry about her, Tails." Another Cream skidded to a halt beside him for a moment, her blue dress her only identifier. "She'll- Hey! Get back here, please!" She raced off again, chasing after two toddler sized Creams stumbling away towards an elevator shaft.

"It's fine." He smiled.

He deserved it after all.

"Are you sure about this?" Another Cream staggered past, red bandanna holding her ears out of the way as she hoisted a crate far too heavy for her onto the seat behind Cream. "You can still come down to Earth together with us."

"I'm sure." He nodded. "If I can't find the rest of the time stones down on Little Planet I'll come and find you next year. If I can..."

He rubbed the back of his head, the hole in his skull hadn't completely healed yet, leaving a bump of scarred flesh.

Harvesting enough rings to fix him had taken awhile, and the detonation scorched off most of his fur, but with all the badniks shut down when Mama died it had just been a matter of exploring the Death Egg's interior until they found enough of them to get him upright again.

"Do what you've got to do, Tails." Another Cream ruffled the fur on his head, despite standing on tiptoes to do so. "We'll be down there living the high life while you do all the hard work." She pushed her headband back. "Maybe I'll make Sonic my rabbit Friday? Hey! Come on you guys! We're going to miss the flight!"

Six more Creams, obedient, bright and well behaved, trouped behind her like ducklings to their patchwork seats. One waved at him. He waved back with a bright smile.

"Well, it's now or never, Tails." Cream came back, a Cream under each arm. "We miss it now and we'll be stuck in _this_ old place for the next year." She plopped down the toddlers in two seats and zipped back to him a moment later, grinding the toe of her red and white sneaker against the floor. "So… uh…"

Miles raised a fist for a fist bump while Cream stepped in for a hug. She hesitated, ears turning pink before giggling and lunging in for the hug anyway.

Eighty percent.

"I'm going to miss you, buddy. I know you're going to do great down there."

"I'll miss you guys too." Miles grinned, rubbing the back of his head. "I'll try to make you proud though."

"Already am, little guy. Already am." The shuttle door started to close. Cream zipped inside, striking a pose and wagging her finger at him while it shut. "Oh! And if you see me down there, don't forget to say hi! You'll blow my miiiind!"

And then the door sealed shut. Miles waved, despite the lack of windows, and walked out of the hangar, still smiling.

Still fine on the outside.

Already they were starting to fade. Their seeded personalities slowly but surely drifting towards Cream's. Agreeable and conscientious, extroverted and curious. The further from the original, the faster their personalities would fade until they became not quite Cream, but not his friends either. A slow, fuzzy type of death to be sure, but not one he wanted to watch happen.

Especially when it had been his idea to do that to them.

Monsters never really changed, after all.

"So are you finally ready, Miles?"

Doodle popped up beside him, her red and yellow jacket stained with grease. The dim lighting here on the lower levels sent deep shadows across her face.

"Sure am!" Miles grinned. "I'm going to save the world."

Doodle smiled her dreamy smile. "That's the spirit."

"Sure you won't come with me?"

"I'm not big on exercise." Doodle shrugged. "Plus you'll need someone here to pick you up if things don't go right."

Doodle wrapped her hands around Miles' head tight enough he lost a few strands of fur in the process.

"Don't worry about me, little dream." She smiled, flicking a hand through a ponytail. "I'll have a lot of stuff to keep me busy while you're down there. And if you change your timeline I'll either come and find you myself when I get bored in this one, or I'll never have been waiting for you in the first place. Time's funny like that."

"Alright. Take care of yourself, Doodle." Miles stepped towards the elevator that would ultimately drop him down to the surface of Little Planet. "Stay out of trouble and I'll see you soon. Unless I never did." He grinned, waving cheerily at Doodle until she was out of sight.

Until he was alone in the dark.

**The End**


	15. Epilogue

It was _such_ a shame about Mama.

Doodle sauntered through dark corridors, hopping over fallen mechs and dancing between collapsed bulkheads as she went.

They'd been together for so long, after all, nearly inseparable.

She came to the door. Average size, unmarked, unremarkable.

But a young maiden couldn't stay cooped up in bed forever. Especially when matters of the heart were involved.

The door slid open, revealing long rows of empty tubes. Doodle walked by them, humming softly to herself as she went to the only filled one, leaning forward to peek at the tiny furry form floating within, long fur swaying softly between the wires protruding from its flesh.

"Good morning! Can you feel the sunshine today?"

She held up a white gloved hand, strands of yellow-orange fur caught between her fingers.

"I've got lots of new sisters for you today!"

And with these, Miles was sure to love her almost as much as she loved him.

Doodle grinned, her face pressed up against the glass as she waited for the young fox inside to grow.

Love was patient, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this alternative look at Tails the Fox.
> 
> This story was at one point nearly included as part of Happy Days, but in the end I decided the change in tone and emphasis would have been too much of a whiplash from Happy Days' heavy focus on character and relationship.
> 
> Horror, more than any other genre, is about the helplessness of the protagonists against the threats they face. Wonder Woman can't be the heroine of a slasher movie, and Peter Venkman can't be the hero in a haunted house movie, because those are problems they are well equipped to handle. But what isn't the world's smartest fox equipped to handle, apart from trousers?
> 
> Hopefully, if I've done my job right, you've felt a little of Miles' distress along the way and it's felt like a genuine threat without diminishing (or overplaying, for that matter) his character, and without things ever getting so dark or horrible that it stopped feeling like a Sonic the Hedgehog story.
> 
> But now the world is saved, after it was already destroyed; the damsel has been rescued - a baker's dozen of them no less, but none of them the damsel he expected; and Miles is on his way to a new adventure with a few more scars and questions than before. 
> 
> Will Miles manage to make it back to his own time? Will he manage to stop the end of the world? And what adventures will the Cream Team have on Earth, and is it as uninhabited as it appears? Stay tuned for Eternal Tails: Chronos Divide, coming to AO3 as soon as I get around to editing the blasted thing. Or possibly already. Time travel is funny like that, even when you're only travelling in the one direction.
> 
> If you enjoyed it, or think there are things I need to work on in future (or hated it, that's cool too!), please leave a comment or send a PM. This includes typos, which are the bane of my existence, or if there are tags I should have added because AO3's tag system confuses me. Likewise, if there are any Eternal Tails stories or shorts you'd like to see in future, don't be shy!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed reading, and see you next time.
> 
> ~ Pan


End file.
